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By Ronnie CohenReuters • Monday October 1, 2012 6:56 AM

SAN FRANCISCO — Chevelle “Chevy” Wheeler’s mother dropped her off at Franklin High School in
Stockton, Calif., the morning of Oct. 7, 1985. “I love you,” the 16-year-old said as she left the
car. Paula Wheeler never saw her daughter again.

She still recalls in chilling detail the scene 16 years later, when the man convicted of killing
her daughter and three others turned to her and her husband in court and highlighted the painful
fact that their child’s body had never been found.

“My parents will know where I’m at when I’m gone, but you’ll never know where Chevy is,” she
remembers Wesley Shermantine telling them. The condemned killer long refused to offer information
about his victims’ fates or whereabouts.

But after more than a decade of silence on Death Row, Shermantine, 46, has begun to speak out
about the string of murders — by his count, six dozen — he committed with his childhood friend and
partner in crime, Loren Herzog.

Together they were dubbed the “Speed Freak” killers, so named for the methamphetamine-fueled
violence investigators said they unleashed in and around California’s farm-rich San Joaquin Valley
during the 1980s and ’90s.

Authorities have long suspected the pair in as many as 22 deaths in all, mostly of young women
and girls who went missing.

If Shermantine’s claims prove true, he and Herzog, who committed suicide in January, could end
up responsible for 72 killings, ranking them among the most-prolific serial murderers in U.S.
history.

Shermantine began dribbling out information late last year to a bounty hunter who offered him
money in exchange for the location of burial sites.

The killer’s crudely drawn maps helped lead authorities in February to skeletal remains of Chevy
Wheeler and four others, finally providing a measure of closure to Paula Wheeler and some of the
other victims’ relatives.

But those discoveries may represent just a fraction of a much larger tally.

In a recent letter to a reporter, Shermantine put the number of victims at “24 X 3,” though he
has suggested Herzog was mainly responsible. And a telephone hot line investigators set up this
year drew reports of about 65 missing persons who callers believed might have fallen prey to
Shermantine and Herzog.

Prosecutor Thomas Testa, who tried both men, said such high numbers strike him as possibly
intended for “shock value.”

“We never had a number anywhere near 70,” he said. But, he added, “I wouldn’t discount it
entirely. … Maybe there’s some fame in a higher number than the next guy.”

Meanwhile, efforts to locate and positively identify remains have been slow.

A California state legislator and a retired FBI agent assigned to interview Shermantine and
assess his credibility say the investigation was badly hindered by ineptitude and by
law-enforcement agencies working at cross purposes.

Whatever Herzog knew about his victims’ whereabouts, he took to his own grave in January,
hanging himself just hours after the bounty hunter informed him that Shermantine was starting to
pinpoint graves.